Yamato (2199)
:This article describes the space battleship ''Yamato from Space Battleship Yamato 2199 and its sequels. For information on other vessels bearing the name Yamato in this series or in other series or movies, see the Yamato disambiguation page. The Yamato (BBY-01) (ヤマト, Yamato) is a United Nations Cosmo Navy space battleship. First conceived as an evacuation ship for survivors fleeing the Garmillas-Earth War, an unexpected gift of highly advanced wave motion technology from the planet Iscandar convinces the leadership of the United Nations Cosmo Force to use it in a more ambitious and dangerous plan to save all life on Earth from extinction. During its first year of service, Yamato and its crew also become involved in the Garmillas Civil War, bring an end to the war with the Great Garmillas Empire, discover the mysterious world Shambleau, and make first human contact with the Gatlantis Empire. Armaments and Technical Specifications Notable Sections History Origins Earth's first contact with an alien civilization in 2191, the Great Garmillas Empire, quickly turned into a war that overwhelmed its limited abilities over the following years ("Messenger of Iscandar", "A World I Once Saw", "Out of the Forest of Memory"). As the ships of the UN Cosmo Navy were outclassed by their alien opponents and as the human homeworld was turned into a radioactive desert by a ceaseless Garmillan onslaught, the leadership of the Earth Federation saw escape as the only option. Under Project Izumo, humanity would build its first interstellar spaceship and ferry a small group of survivors out of the solar system to find a new planet to inhabit. A site underneath the dry seabed of the East China Sea, off the Bonomisaki Cape of Japan, was chosen for construction. The new ship was built partially underground and partially above the surface; its exposed upper hull was disguised as the wreck of the naval battleship [[IJN Yamato|IJN Yamato]], which sank in the area almost two and a half centuries earlier, to hide the project from enemy forces ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Toward a Sea of Stars", "A Choice for the Future"). As construction commenced on the vessel and a crew was selected, a surprise alien visitor arrived in early 2198 with information that would shake up the Izumo Plan. Princess Yurisha Iscandar presented an invitation to travel to the distant world of Iscandar and take possession of the Cosmo Reverse System, a device that would remove the radiation threatening Earth's surviving population and restore Earth's ravaged biosphere. She also offered plans for a highly advanced wave motion system to power the human ship for the round trip journey to the Large Magellanic Cloud and back. Izumo was secretly scrapped, and as part of the new Yamato Plan, the vessel was re-designed to accommodate a wave motion engine. Recognizing the incredible energies that could be generated by the engine, Major Shiro Sanada, a scientist serving in the UNCF, designed a wave motion shield for defense and an unparalleled weapon of mass destruction, a wave motion gun. Just as construction was being completed one year later, a sister of Princess Yurisha arrived in the solar system with a wave motion core that would drive the engine. The space battleship Yamato was ready for flight, and the crew were notified of their new mission by their commanding officer, Admiral Juzo Okita, only a day prior to launch ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Toward a Sea of Stars", "Out of the Forest of Memory", "They're Coming!"). 2199: Voyage to Iscandar Yamato's outbound flight through the solar system became a trial for its new technologies. Its shock cannons easily took out a Garmillan carrier and an interplanetary missile sent to destroy it before liftoff, and the wave motion shields safely deflected the missile's explosion at point blank range ("Toward a Sea of Stars"). One day later, the battleship conducted its first warp and traveled from Mars to Jupiter almost instantaneously, and at Jupiter, Yamato obliterated a massive Garmillas floating continent hidden in the gas giant's atmosphere with its wave motion gun ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere"). A condenser failure on the main engine the very next day forced a detour to the moon Enceladus for supplies of cosmonite-90 to make repairs ("Gravestone on a Frozen Field"), but the battleship was soon ready for a full assault on Pluto. Combined with its full fighter squadron, Yamato fended off a counterattack, bombarded the main enemy base, and wiped out the Garmillas presence in the solar system ("The Trap on All Sides", "The Sun Sets on Pluto"). The ship was ready for the demands of the long mission ahead and headed out into the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond--but the Garmillans were no longer taking their human adversaries for granted. As word of the ship's successes reached the highest levels of the empire and inspired conquered worlds to defy the empire's rule, Leader Abelt Dessler grew increasingly focused on stopping it ("Wish Upon a Star", "What Lies Beyond"). Yamato was very nearly destroyed at the Battle of Carell 163, and was saved only by an surprise Garmillan withdrawal ("Point of No Return"). Delayed in reaching Iscandar and with morale lower than ever, members of the crew who had been conspiring to re-start the Izumo Plan launched a short-lived mutiny ("A Choice for the Future"). After the mutiny was put down, officers who had been exploring a nearby Earthlike planet returned with information that would save the mission: a network of ancient alien subspace gates that could trim months off Yamato's journey ("Out of the Forest of Memory"). To access the network, though, the ship would have to confront those who currently controlled it--the Garmillas Empire. Admiral Okita and his crew devised a plan to charge through the network before destroying the hub located at the planet Balun with the wave motion gun. The ship arrived safely at the far side of the network on the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, having not only rendered the network nearly useless, but also destroying thousands of enemy warships in the process and crippling the Garmillas military ("Over the Black Light"). Yamato was now seen as the single greatest threat to Dessler's empire. A particularly brutal engagement in the Rainbow Star Cluster failed to stop its progress toward Iscandar ("Under a Rainbow Sun"), and after happening upon a liberated prison world, Yamato was given drydock repairs and military intelligence from members of the Garmillan resistance movement against Leader Dessler ("Prison Planet 17", "The Planet That We Head For"). When Yamato arrived in the home star system of both Iscandar and Garmillas, Dessler attempted to take down the battleship by any means necessary, even if it meant annihilating his own capital city. During the battle, Yamato fired its wave motion gun against Dessler's attack, saving not only itself but the entire capital. In doing so, Yamato demonstrated humanity's honorable intentions, even as their own ruler proved himself a menace to his own people. Dessler was assumed to have died during the battle, and with the war having come to an abrupt end, Yamato was allowed to fly on to its destination ("One Man's War", "The Distant Promised Land"). After arriving on Iscandar, the crew of Yamato learned that the ship itself may have caused the mission to fail. Queen Starsha, having been told about Yamato's wave motion gun by Dessler and witnessing it herself during the fight over Garmillas, was horrified that her planet's technological gift had been used to create a superweapon. She refused to deliver the long-awaited Cosmo Reverse System, concluding that humanity was too dangerous to survive. However, the intervention of two people who were very close to her eventually changed her mind, and she personally brought the device to Yamato--but she demand Admiral Okita's pledge that humanity would never again create wave motion-based weapons. The firing components of Yamato's wave motion gun were removed and replaced with the Cosmo Reverse System, turning the battleship itself into the instrument of Earth's survival. The forward muzzle of the gun was sealed, and a plaque announcing a new treaty signed by representatives of Earth, Iscandar, and the Great Garmillas Empire was mounted on the muzzle cover ("The Distant Promised Land", Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark). The return voyage to Earth was much faster and less eventful, except for two major incidents. The first, occurring a month after departing Iscandar, began when Yamato was ambushed by an expeditionary fleet of the Gatlantis Empire that sought to take the ship as their own. Yamato escaped, but found itself trapped inside a region of space with seemingly no connection to the rest of the universe. On the planet at the heart of the region, Shambleau, a human landing party discovered members of a Garmillas task force that had also been trapped. Yamato and the task force would cooperate and fight side-by-side after the Gatlanteans tracked Yamato to Shambleau (Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark). The second took place one month later when Yamato attempted to reactivate the only undamaged subspace gate at Balun. The ship was hit by a surprise attack from rogue Garmillan forces and fled through the gate and into a subspace corridor--only to be seized and boarded by troops serving Abelt Dessler, still alive and intending to use Yamato to reclaim the empire for himself. After repelling the boarding party, Yamato opened fire on Dessler's flagship with a volley of shells from its shock cannons, fatally crippling it ("The Forever War"). Yamato returned to Earth on December 8th, with less than forty-one days remaining before the planet's energy sources were projected to run out. The Cosmo Reverser was activated almost immediately upon arrival, and Yamato turned the dying desert planet back into the watery, green world it had once been (Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark, "Memories of the Blue Planet"). Gallery Behind the Scenes *Unlike the original 1974 incarnation of Yamato, the space battleship was not constructed inside the wreckage of the twentieth century naval warship. This takes into account the [[wikipedia:Japanese_battleship_Yamato#Wreck_discovery|discovery and confirmation of the IJN Yamato]] at the bottom of the East China Sea in the 1980s. Photos show that the ship had broken into two large separate pieces and multiple fragments scattered across the ocean floor as it sank.[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FP0tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=f6cFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6363%2C2384338 "Remains of sunken Japanese battleship Yamato discovered," Reading Eagle and Associated Press, August 4, 1985, p. D13] Without a relatively intact wreck, building a large starship inside of it would have been impossible, regardless of other engineering challenges. References Category:Spaceships Category:United Nations Cosmo Navy vessel Category:Battleship